wing of kaz has added a photo to the pool:
福岡県田川市、三井寺（平等寺） / Mitsui-ji (Byōdō-ji), Tagawa City, Fukuoka Prefecture
BERLIJN (ANP/RTR) - De Duitse economische onderzoeksinstituten Ifo en IfW hebben de groeiverwachtingen voor de Duitse economie voor 2026 stevig verhoogd. De verhogingen volgen op een sterker dan verwachte groei van de grootste economie van Europa in het tweede kwartaal.
In april verlaagden de belangrijke Duitse onderzoeksinstituten nog hun groeiverwachtingen voor dit jaar. Ze vreesden dat het land hard zou worden getroffen door de stijgende inflatie door de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten. Ifo verwacht nu dat het Duitse bruto binnenlands product (bbp), de maatstaf voor economische groei, in 2026 met 1,4 procent stijgt en het IfW rekent op een bbp-groei van 1,3 procent. Eerder gingen beide instituten nog uit van een groei van 0,8 procent dit jaar.
De verhoging is volgens het IfW het gevolg van een duidelijke versnelling van de economische activiteit en een verbeterd ondernemersvertrouwen, ondanks de aanhoudende geopolitieke tegenwind door de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten.
Het nieuwe box 3-stelsel komt er voorlopig niet. Coalitiepartijen VVD, D66 en CDA kunnen het niet eens worden over de toekomst van de vermogensbelasting en willen het wetsvoorstel in de Eerste Kamer vooruitschuiven, zo blijkt uit uitgelekte Prinsjesdag-stukken. Drie profielen laten zien voor wie dat voordelig uitpakt, en voor wie niet.
Waarom het wetsvoorstel op de plank blijft
De Tweede Kamer stemde in februari 2026 in met het wetsvoorstel Wet werkelijk rendement box 3. In de Eerste Kamer dreigden zelfs coalitiepartijen VVD en CDA tegen te stemmen, waarna staatssecretaris Eerenberg tijd kreeg om met een nieuw plan te komen. Die tijd, tot Prinsjesdag, is nu op: de coalitie kon het over geen van de voorstellen eens worden en wil dat de Eerste Kamer er voorlopig niet over stemt, zo meldde de NOS.
De coalitie struikelt over een principiële keuze. Bij een vermogensaanwasbelasting betaal je elk jaar over de waardestijging van je vermogen, ook als die winst nog vastzit in aandelen. Bij een vermogenswinstbelasting reken je pas af op het moment dat je verkoopt. Vooral de VVD wil niet dat mensen belasting betalen over papieren winsten die nog niet zijn verzilverd.
Het uitstel kan de schatkist jaarlijks 2,4 tot 2,5 miljard euro aan begrote inkomsten kosten. Wie er beter van wordt: dat hangt volledig af van je situatie.
Wat er gewoon blijft gelden
Het huidige forfaitaire stelsel blijft voorlopig van kracht. De Belastingdienst rekent met fictieve rendementen per vermogenscategorie, niet met je werkelijke winst of verlies. Dit zijn de cijfers voor 2026:
- Forfait spaargeld: 1,28 procent
- Forfait beleggingen en overige bezittingen: 6 procent (in 2027: 6,37 procent)
- Heffingsvrij vermogen: €59.357 per persoon (€118.714 voor fiscale partners)
- Tarief: 36 procent over het fictieve rendement
Alleen spaargeld: nauwelijks verschil
Neem een alleenstaande met €100.000 op de spaarrekening. Na aftrek van de vrijstelling resteert €40.643 belastbaar vermogen. Het fictieve rendement van 1,28 procent: €520 grondslag. De belasting: 36 procent daarover, circa €187 per jaar.
In het geparkeerde wetsvoorstel zou een heffingsvrij resultaat van €1.800 per jaar gelden, met 36 procent belasting over het werkelijke rendement daarboven. Bij een spaarrente van 1,5 procent levert €100.000 spaargeld €1.500 op, volledig onder die drempel. Het verschil: maximaal een paar honderd euro per jaar. Voor doorsnee spaarders is het uitstel nagenoeg neutraal.
Spaargeld plus beleggingen: hier zit het verschil
Bij een mix van €50.000 spaargeld en €150.000 in beleggingen wordt het verschil fors. In het huidige stelsel wordt de vrijstelling evenredig verdeeld over de vermogenscategorieën: driekwart van het belastbare vermogen valt onder het beleggingsforfait van 6 procent. Dat levert een totaal fictief rendement op van circa €6.779 en een belastingaanslag van zo'n €2.440.
In het voorgestelde nieuwe stelsel telt het werkelijke rendement. Wie op die €150.000 beleggingen 8 procent rendement behaalt, zou over een werkelijk resultaat van €12.750 (minus €1.800 vrijstelling) circa €3.940 betalen. Het forfait bespaart deze belegger dus ruim €1.500 per jaar.
Hoe hoger je werkelijke beleggingsrendement, hoe voordeliger het huidige forfait uitpakt.
De keerzijde: wie minder dan 6 procent rendement behaalt, betaalt onder het forfait belasting over een rendement dat er niet is. Er bestaat een tegenbewijsregeling waarmee je kunt aantonen dat je werkelijke rendement lager was, maar die vergt extra administratie bij de aangifte.
Tweede woning: het forfait tikt door
In 2026 belast box 3 vastgoed op een fictief rendement van 6 procent van de WOZ-waarde, belast tegen 36 procent. Op €500.000 vastgoed zonder schuld komt dat neer op ruim €9.500 belasting per jaar. In het geparkeerde wetsvoorstel zou vastgoed onder een vermogenswinstbelasting vallen: pas belasting bij verkoop. Zolang het uitstel duurt, blijft de jaarlijkse forfaitaire heffing van kracht.
Hoe lang kan dit duren?
De coalitie koerst nu aan op een volledige vermogenswinstbelasting, waarbij pas bij verkoop wordt afgerekend. Onder andere vanwege de beperkte ict-capaciteit bij de Belastingdienst kan die pas in 2032 worden ingevoerd. De ingangsdatum is al meerdere keren uitgesteld: eerst van 2026 naar 2027, vervolgens naar 2028. De kans is reëel dat er jarenlang onder het huidige stelsel wordt doorbelast.
De Hoge Raad oordeelde in december 2021 dat het oude systeem strijdig was met het eigendomsrecht en het gelijkheidsbeginsel. Dat systeem is voorlopig het systeem dat overeind blijft. Voor de doorsnee spaarder maakt dat nauwelijks uit. Voor beleggers met hoog rendement en vastgoedbezitters is het uitstel jaar na jaar geld waard.
Bronnen: NOS, Vastgoedinsider, Taxence, Accountancy Vanmorgen, Mr. FOB
GENÈVE (ANP) - De World Meteorological Organization (WMO) verwacht dat de effecten van weerfenomeen El Niño tot ver in 2027 te merken zijn. De organisatie zet daarom een grote informatiecampagne op. "Deze uitzonderlijke El Niño vraagt om een uitzonderlijke voorbereiding en respons", aldus secretaris-generaal van de WMO Celeste Saulo. "Nog nooit in de vijftigjarige geschiedenis van de WMO hebben we zo'n grootschalige mobilisatie op touw gezet."
Tijdens El Niño warmt het water in het gedeelte van de Grote Oceaan rond de evenaar op, met gevolgen voor weersystemen wereldwijd. Sommige gebieden krijgen te maken met hevige regenval, terwijl het in andere gebieden juist zeer droog is. De WMO verwacht dat El Niño de komende maanden veel sterker wordt. "Het heeft de potentie om gemeenschappen en economieën over de hele wereld een enorme klap toe te dienen", aldus Saulo.
DEN HAAG (ANP) - Voormalig directeur van het Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau (SCP) Kim Putters had snel door dat de coronapandemie een crisis "op heel veel vlakken" zou gaan worden. Dat heeft hij ook zo snel mogelijk tegen het kabinet gezegd in een overleg in het Catshuis, zei Putters tegen de parlementaire enquêtecommissie corona.
Volgens Putters zou het snel ook een "economische en maatschappelijke crisis" worden. Hij voelde daarom ook meteen "de urgentie" om bestaande gegevens over de Nederlandse samenleving met het kabinet te delen.
Putters en directeuren van de andere planbureaus schoven niet wekelijks aan bij het Catshuisoverleg om over de economische en maatschappelijke gevolgen te praten. Epidemiologen zaten er wel om over de gezondheidscrisis te praten. "Maar eenzaamheidscijfers zijn geen dagkoersen. Je hoeft niet elke week over die gegevens te praten, want ze veranderen niet elke week."
DEN HAAG (ANP) - De euthanasiebrief met daarop de namen van alle veertien ondertekenaars in de zaak rond de 17-jarige Milou Verhoof, wordt aan de ouders verstrekt. Dat heeft de rechtbank in Den Haag donderdagochtend bepaald, nadat de ouders van de in 2023 overleden Milou in een kort geding om de openbaring hadden gevraagd.
In de brief, in 2024 verzonden en ondertekend door veertien artsen, zou een aantal van hen aan het OM hebben gevraagd om een verkennend onderzoek te starten naar de ouders en de behandelaars van de jonge vrouw.
As FromSoftware’s new multiplayer game The Duskbloods nears release, the legendary game director behind Dark Souls talks connection, pessimism and of course, feet
Since 2020’s Demon’s Souls, Japanese video game director Hidetaka Miyazaki has shown the world a different way to think about game design. His games defy convention with punishing fights, obscure rules, and unknowable, inhospitable worlds. The “Soulslike” genre – named after Demon’s Souls and its sequel Dark Souls – is now ubiquitous, influencing multimillion-sellers from God of War and Star Wars: Jedi to Hollow Knight. Miyazaki’s most recent success, 2022’s Elden Ring, which credited Game of Thrones author George RR Martin as a co-creator, sold over 30m copies and inspired Alex Garland to adapt it for the big screen at A24. It earned Miyazaki a spot on Time magazine’s “most influential” list, an accolade he shares with just one other game developer: Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto.
Miyazaki is now 51 and has been FromSoftware’s president since 2014, elevated from game designer to CEO after the success of the Souls series. He has a cherubic face that could pass for 35. He rarely speaks publicly, and never on camera. When he does speak, he answers questions like one of his characters – softly, sadly, his head bowed, making eye-contact only when I am speaking. Outside the studio where we speak is the sprawl of Tokyo’s Shinjuku, an ever-changing maze where tourists get lost and pop-up stores appear and vanish without a trace. Today, a J-pop band performs in the square as the cicadas scream from the trees. A gilded statue of Melania, one of Elden Ring’s toughest bosses, looms over this dimly lit conference room inside From’s headquarters, a bonfire checkpoint away from the chaos.
Continue reading...Bring on the drones: how a technology revolution is being rolled out across Africa’s nature reserves
As graduates of an online training course gather from across the continent, the consensus is overwhelming: computers and saving animals go together
On a bitingly cold night in Lapalala Wilderness nature reserve in South Africa’s Limpopo province, Duncan Kanyakera watches as instructor Jacques Viljoen deploys a thermal drone in search of a lone cheetah. Once the drone has disappeared into the inky sky, Kanyakera, from Tsavo in Kenya, and 20 other conservation professionals from across Africa turn their attention to the open-air screen in anticipation.
Many of the students – from 11 African countries as far flung as Benin, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Madagascar – witnessing the demonstration have earned their places at Lapalala after performing well on an online training programme for protected area technicians (PAT) run by the Connected Conservation Foundation (CCF). Also on the course, are five members of Peace Parks staff in training.
Continue reading...Musk denied he was aware Grok ever produced ‘any naked underage images’
A survivor of child sexual abuse has sued Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company, alleging that its chatbot used pictures of her abuse to generate new illegal pornographic images that depict her.
“Using real images of Plaintiff and class members, Grok generated child pornography depicting Plaintiff and class members,” states the complaint, which was filed last week in a US district court in California.
Continue reading...Like Johnny Depp and Chris Brown before him, Homme has got past his chequered history to retain an adoring fanbase. Almost a decade post-#MeToo, audiences no longer seem to care
As part of the promo for Queens of the Stone Age’s new album Perfecth, the band has set up a novelty complaints hotline for fans to call. “No bitching too big, no whiny too tiny,” it promises. I’ll bite: how about the fact that frontman Josh Homme’s ex-wife Brody Dalle testified in court that he head-butted her so hard that she “saw stars” and said he had fantasised about killing her? Or that he kicked a female photographer in the face? It’s certainly not what anyone’s talking about as part of Homme’s friendly neighbourhood rock star image rehabilitation: duetting on Shania Twain’s new album, taking the couch on Celebrity Gogglebox, teatime BBC 6 Music interviews.
Homme and Dalle clearly had a complicated relationship: he allegedly tried to throw her boyfriend off a balcony; he claims that she was violent towards him; both have taken out restraining orders against one another; Homme has full custody of their kids after Dalle’s boyfriend was found to have forged her signature on an application for a restraining order. Homme has recently talked about coming through a dark period, including successful treatment for cancer, and getting a handle on his vices. Nevertheless, there is clear footage of him brutally kicking the camera of photographer Chelsea Lauren back into her face, which he acknowledged in an apology video, and court testimony from Dalle alleging that a drunk Homme told her “I want to fucking strangle you right now” on one occasion, and head-butted her on another.
Continue reading...The Hollywood hottie is back as the quarterback in disguise, in an oddball comedy that is naughty, lovable and disarmingly unique
In the first episode of season two of Chad Powers, there is but one concern: the main character’s nose has fallen off.
The TV outlet for the wacky side of movie hottie Glen Powell, Chad Powers presents itself to us having willingly taken on the burden of a ludicrous premise. Powell is Russ Holliday, a former hotshot college-football quarterback who, eight years ago, committed a career-cancelling faux pas during the televised game that was meant to make him a star. With his sporting dreams suddenly vaporised, he became an obnoxious playboy. But then, just as he felt his feet starting to scrape rock bottom, he heard that a university in Georgia was holding open tryouts for a new quarterback. Donning prosthetic whiskers, teeth, hair and an occasionally unreliable nose – a slightly more sophisticated version of a joke-shop disguise – Russ became “Chad Powers”, a southern oddball and the new star of the team, while constantly dealing with the threat of being found out and sent home.
Continue reading...
Authorities in the Moscow region said an industrial plant was also damaged amid the overnight drone barrage across Russia.
Today's links
- Preparing for a post-Trump internet: You'd better hope it's also a post-American internet.
- Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.
- Object permanence: Barnum and Bailey v journalism; Wired's Wikipedia article is a wiki; Singapore's national wifi; Twitter arguments.
- Upcoming appearances: Dąbrowa Górnicza, Warsaw, Brighton, London, Budapest, Edmonton, South Bend, Hudson, Calgary, Winnipeg, Vancouver, Victoria, Ottawa.
- Recent appearances: Where I've been.
- Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.
- Colophon: All the rest.
Preparing for a post-Trump internet (permalink)
What if post-Trump America is even worse?
I know, it's tempting to think of Trump as a cause, rather than an effect – as an aberration who dragged America into fascism. Trump is exceptional, but the thing that makes him exceptional isn't his corruption, recklessness or cruelty. What makes Trump exceptional is his ability to cajole, intimidate and flatter America's most corrupt, reckless and cruel people into a coalition.
These people hate each other. Nick Fuentes drifts off to sleep every night furiously fantasizing about turning Stephen Miller into a lampshade. Laura Loomer just got ICE to intervene in a Twitter feud by having a guy she dislikes violently arrested, shackled at wrist and ankle, perp-walked, and then shuffled from location to location so that he couldn't meet with his lawyer before being deported:
They steal like crazy, get each other locked up, and gorge themselves on mind-altering supplements and peptides they buy from random podcast chuds. They are fantastically paranoid, marinated in conspiracy theories, and perennially high on their own supply: all that bullshit about "great replacement," "China is making America hate data centers" and "antifa is a terrorist organization"? A lot of them genuinely believe it. It's not just ghost stories they made up to scare cognitively compromised tube-feeding Fox News addicted rubes. Trumpland is full of actual, functioning adults in positions of real power who periodically go into the bathroom, turn off the lights, hold a flashlight under their chins and scare themselves silly by saying "Aaaaaaaaaantiiii-faaaaaaaaaa" into the mirror.
Donald Trump did not conjure these people out of thin air. They've been lurking in America since its earliest days. They worship authoritarian criminals:
https://abc30.com/post/roger-stones-tattoo-of-nixon-goes-viral/5107047
January 6 wasn't the first presidency they tried to steal, it's just the first one they got punished for:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot
They commit brazen crimes in office that could land them in prison for the rest of their lives, and therefore can't afford to lose power, ever:
https://www.propublica.org/series/supreme-court-scotus
Trump didn't invent these creeps, he just emboldened them. If Reaganomics was capitalism with the gloves off, then Trumpismo is Reaganism with the mask off:
So what happens when Trump strokes out while watching Kid Rock wrestle a Hulk Hogan impersonator in a televised barbed-wire cage match on the White House lawn that one of Trump's cronies has exclusive pay-per-view rights to? I mean, it's possible that the Democratic leadership will step up and insist on some form of regular order in the succession to Vance, but come on. These are the tiny "Down with this sort of thing" ping-pong paddle people:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/ping-pong-paddles-to-a-gun-fight/
More likely is that Vance – a weak, unimportant charisma-vacuum who is loathed by all of Trump's factions – will end up presiding over a far more chaotic period in American governance than anything that happened under Trump. That could mean ICE leaders ordering mass graves dug in the centers of America's largest cities, drunken generals invading random countries, podcasters declaring "The Purge" with brackets sponsored by Kalshi.
This isn't the first time in living memory that this has happened. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed, virtually overnight, and the fragile threads that bound its feuding, corrupt regional bosses all snapped, leaving behind nuclear-tipped mafia states. This was a chaotic and frightening time for the people whose governments had simply winked out of existence – but it was also terrifying for the rest of the world, who scrambled to secure those nukes before they could end up in the hands of "non-state actors":
The Soviet Union had some deeply dysfunctional leadership politics to be sure, but at least the people involved were beholden to various power blocs who had an interest in keeping things going. As the geopolitics wonks say, "they were playing an iterated game," where some losses had to be tolerated so that the losers could try to win the next time around.
But there are plenty of people who weren't (and aren't) playing iterated games – people who are even more unhinged, more reckless, more short-termist than the maniacs who filled the world with nuclear weapons. These people don't necessarily care if civilization or even the human race persists if they can't get their way. The thought of them running around with these "weapons of mass destruction" ratcheted up the half-century of stark nuclear terror that had preceded the USSR's collapse to new heights.
Which brings me to the post-Trump internet. Trump isn't the first president to figure out that the internet could be weaponized for geopolitical ends. As the Snowden disclosures showed, there has been a longstanding bipartisan consensus that the internet is a great tool for American surveillance, conducted against friend and foe alike.
But Trump is the first president to openly, directly recruit American tech companies to simply brick foreign officials who displease him, starting with the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, who lost his Office 365 and Outlook accounts in retaliation for swearing out a genocide warrant for Netanyahu:
https://www.justiceinfo.net/en/156691-how-sanctions-can-weaponize-us-tech-against-the-icc.html
And then Microsoft obliged Trump again, attacking the Brazilian judge who sentenced Jair Bolsonaro to prison over his unsuccessful coup.
America's tech giants have fully, irrevocably fused with Trump. They donated to his campaign. Their CEOs each paid $1m out of their own pockets to sit behind him on the inauguration dais. Google provides location data for Trump's racist pogroms. Microsoft provides the administrative tools to carry them out. Oracle provides the databases. Apple blocks apps that warn its customers when they're about to be snatched:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/10/06/rogue-capitalism/#orphaned-syrian-refugees-need-not-apply
In exchange, Trump got Canada and the UK to ditch their plans to levy a 3% tax on American tech giants; he got the EU to gut its privacy laws; he sanctioned EU officials who tried to regulate social media; and he's told the tech companies to go through EU officials' private messages, looking for anti-Big Tech partisans whom he will ban from ever entering the USA:
Big Tech has proved that its only principles are not paying taxes, invading your privacy, and not being broken up by antitrust enforcers:
Tech companies will do anything for any leader who can guarantee those outcomes. There's no capitulation too petty and stupid for Big Tech:
https://people.com/apple-maps-joins-google-approving-trump-lake-america-change-12074262
America no longer has allies or trading partners. America has rivals and enemies. Trump's coalition wants him to steal Iran, steal Venezuela, steal Cuba, steal Alberta, steal Canada, steal Greenland. They want him to help Israel steal Palestine and Lebanon. And as Trump considers this program of imperial conquest, he has started to tinker with one of the most devastating geopolitical weapons the world has ever seen: tech shutdowns.
If Trump wants Greenland, he can just order Microsoft to switch off Office 365 for the country and every ministry and significant firm will be shuttered in an instant, along with many households:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/04/04/digital-subjugation/#greenlands-next
He can order Apple and Google to shut off all of Denmark's phones. He can order John Deere to shut off all their tractors:
https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/08/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors/
(One thing we don't need to worry about is Trump ordering OpenAI and Anthropic to switch off all of Europe's chatbots – sure, he could do that, but if he did, nothing important would break:)
https://pluralistic.net/2026/06/18/their-trillions-our-billions/#eyes-on-the-prize
As weapons of mass destruction go, nukes are pretty stupid. The big ones destroy the territory you're trying to conquer and leave behind an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland. They send clouds of nuclear fallout swirling around the globe, potentially killing you or your allies. 80 years into the Nuclear Age, the best anyone's come up with is a neutron bomb, which only kinda renders territory uninhabitable while still killing everyone with massive radiation blasts.
Compared to nukes, tech shutdowns are amazing. Thanks to Big Tech, America – and only America – can brick almost any country on earth, shutting down its administration, agriculture and industry without firing a single shot. The only thing that prevented this from happening was an American elite bloc that was playing an iterated game and saw more benefit from sharing in Big Tech profits as they looted and spied on the world, as opposed to grabbing territory while scaring the world into breaking all land-speed records to ditch American tech and pursue meaningful digital sovereignty.
Trump's chuds and freaks are not bound by these constraints. They're perfectly happy to do Gunboat Diplomacy 2.0: Cloud Diplomacy, where everything from your smartphones to your payroll records can be seized at the click of a mouse, and your country had better fall in line. And Trump is a sick, frail old man, who is not long for this world. When he goes, all bets are off: America will be at the mercy of warring factions who will deploy the coercion and bribery that turned Big Tech into Trump's geopolitical weapon in order to achieve their own purposes – which might well be even stupider, crueler and more unhinged than Trump's.
There's only one way out of this mess: the rapid disassembly of the American internet and the rapid creation of a post-American internet, one built on open, auditable, sovereign digital public goods, internationally built and maintained:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/01/39c3/#the-new-coalition
In its own way, the creation of this post-American internet is as urgent and as global as was the creation of the covid vaccines. But whenever I speak to powerful people about this, they ask the same question: "What if this makes Trump mad?"
This represents a grave failure to take this crisis seriously. Trump doesn't need to be "mad" to attack your country. Trump attacked Canada over its wildfires, accusing Canada of polluting America's air:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/us-complaints-trump-widlfire-smoke-9.7274466
But even if Trump never gets mad at you, that's no guarantee of safety. Trump is not long for this world, and his death or incapacity is no guarantee of the restoration of a "normal" America. And even if America finds its way to "normal" after Trump, that's no guarantee that it will stay normal. The armed, organized maniacs who have seized power in America and who are cheering him on as he rampages all over the world, kidnapping leaders and dropping bombs on schoolchildren are not going to dig a hole, crawl inside it, and pull the dirt down on top of themselves.
But let's say that we find ourselves in the best of worlds, where American fascism is comprehensively defeated and the country embarks on a years-long program of denazification:
https://pluralistic.net/2026/02/10/miller-in-the-dock/#denazification
Even in that amazing future, the world should still race to build a post-American internet. The world should have built that internet after the Snowden revelations. That ghastly failure created the Trumpian internet. If the post-Trump internet isn't a post-American internet, then it'll only be a matter of time until the next crisis comes along, and the coming years will give Big Tech even more chances to worm its tendrils into the world's governments, firms and households, making that crisis be even harder to survive. The best time to act was 13 years ago, after Snowden. The second best time is now.
Hey look at this (permalink)
- The Scandal That Could Break the Latin American Far Right https://jacobin.com/2026/09/cerimedo-latin-america-far-right-disinformation
-
Barrister's powerful speech at Filton Trial reminds jury of its right to defy judge https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/barristers-powerful-speech-at-filton
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So the People May Sing. The Anthem Still Goes to Trial. https://copyrightlately.com/corretjer-brown-public-domain-boricua-en-la-luna/
-
Neo-ZIRP Slop in the Post-ZIRP Era https://superbowlstevehunt.substack.com/p/neo-zirp-slop-in-the-post-zirp-era
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With the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses, a mass opposition to big tech is underway. Silicon Valley is in denial. https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/with-the-backlash-to-data-centers
Object permanence (permalink)
#25yrsago Barnum & Bailey hired an ex-CIA spook to destroy a critical journalist https://web.archive.org/web/20010913192931/http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/08/30/circus/print.html
#20yrsago Wired article about Wikipedia is on a editable wiki https://web.archive.org/web/20060901030941/http://www.socialtext.net/wired/index.cgi
#20yrsago Singapore will have nationwide WiFi by 2007 https://web.archive.org/web/20060901191656/http://news.com.com/2100-1039_3-6110189.html
#5yrsago Twitter Arguments https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/29/twitter-arguments/
Upcoming appearances (permalink)
- Dąbrowa Górnicza, Kongres Regeneracja! to interdyscyplinarna, Sep 5
https://regeneracja.plse.org.pl/ -
Warsaw: Romana i Jana Podoskich, Sep 6
https://wydarzenia.phub.pl/events/0ee0e198-f843-423a-890f-c84ff50a46c0 -
Brighton: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Carole Cadwalladr (Brighton Dome), Sep 8
https://brightondome.org/whats-on/LSC-cory-doctorow-the-reverse-centaurs-guide-to-life-after-ai/ -
London: The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI with Riley Quinn (Foyle's Picadilly), Sep 9
https://www.foyles.co.uk/events/enshittification-cory-doctorow-riley-quinn -
Budapest: Brain Bar, Sep 17
https://brainbar.com/munkatars/cory-doctorow -
Edmonton: Elbows Up (Edmonton Public Library), Sep 28
https://www.epl.ca/blogs/post/elbows-up-with-cory-doctorow/ -
South Bend: An Evening With Cory Doctorow (Notre Dame), Oct 6
https://franco.nd.edu/events/2026/10/06/an-evening-with-cory-doctorow/ -
Hudson, OH: Hudson Library, Oct 7
https://engagedpatrons.org/EventsExtended.cfm?SiteID=3850&EventID=596952&PK= -
Calgary: Wordfest, Oct 8
https://wordfest.com/2026/show/wordfest-presents-cory-doctorow-2026/ -
Winnipeg: McNally Robinson, Oct 9
https://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/event-18991/An-Evening-with-Cory-Doctorow -
Vancouver: Read, Resist, Repair, Rejoice (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 19
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/01 -
Victoria: Munro's Books, Oct 20
https://www.munrobooks.com/events/6113620261020 -
Vancouver: Life After AI (Vancouver Writers Festival), Oct 22
https://writersfest.bc.ca/festival-event-2026/46 -
Ottawa: Life After AI (Ottawa Writers Festival), Oct 24
https://writersfestival.org/event/life-after-ai -
Vancouver: BC Policy Solutions Gala, Nov 12
https://bcpolicy.ca/gala/
Recent appearances (permalink)
- How Tech Platforms Took Over the Economy (Dystopia Now)
https://sites.libsyn.com/566555/enshittification-and-reverse-centaurs-cory-doctorow-on-how-tech-platforms-took-over-the-economy -
Hope, AI, Fixing the Internet and the Reverse Centaur of it all (Wilosophy)
https://podcastaddict.com/everyone-relax/episode/231414816 -
Deflating the AI Bubble (Do Not Pass Go)
https://www.donotpassgo.ca/p/deflating-the-ai-bubble-with-cory -
Technofeudal Enshittification (Fucking Cancelled)
https://www.fuckingcancelled.com/p/technofeudal-enshittification-with -
Who The Machine Serves (EFF)
https://archive.org/details/effecting-change-who-the-machine-serves
Latest books (permalink)
- "The Reverse-Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book about being a better AI critic, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 2026
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374621568/thereversecentaursguidetolifeafterai/ -
"Canny Valley": A limited edition collection of the collages I create for Pluralistic, self-published, September 2025 https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/04/illustrious/#chairman-bruce
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"Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ -
"Picks and Shovels": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels).
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"The Bezzle": a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (thebezzle.org).
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"The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org).
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"The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).
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"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
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"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Upcoming books (permalink)
- "The Post-American Internet," a geopolitical sequel of sorts to Enshittification, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2027
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"Unauthorized Bread": a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, April 20, 2027
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"Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It" (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2027
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"The Memex Method," Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2027
Colophon (permalink)
Today's top sources:
Currently writing:
- “Once Is Enemy Action,” a science fiction novel about the origins of modern technofascism. Today's words: 574 (7730 total).
-
"The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Fourth draft completed. Submitted to editor.
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A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
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